About the Sunday Symposium
For nearly 20 years, the Oakmont Sunday Symposium has presented great speakers on a wide range of subjects, such as Science, Philosophy, Politics, Culture, History, the Environment and other topics of general interest. All residents of Oakmont and their guests are invited to attend. There is no membership involved. You are welcome to come once, or to become a regular attendee. Videos of past lectures can be found under the Past Programs tab. You can receive the weekly Symposium e-mail update by sending a request to oaksunsym@gmail.com.
Schedule of Upcoming Programs
September 5: LABOR DAY – NO SYMPOSIUM
September 12: ERIC THOMPSON, “THE SEMI-CONSCIOUS DIALECTIC ART OF RELIGION MAKING”
Dr. Thompson is an Instructor and the Coordinator of Religious Studies at SRJC. He will examine the interplay between human creativity (the 'art' part) and the dialectic process that goes into creating and establishing a major religion, its mythology and dogma. This is an evolutionary process with human imagination serving the function of genetic mutations and the prophet's and new community's not entirely conscious responses to social pressures playing the role of natural selection. He will use the case of Mormonism as a model, because it is so well documented, and use it analogically to look at Islam-with close attention to the prophetic careers of Joseph Smith and Muhammad—(and Early Christianity, by the way) He was in Israel this summer during the infamous “flotilla incident”, and will comment on that in his lecture.
September 19: GENE BOUDREAU, "Mexico's Copper Canyon and the Tarahumara Indians"
Gene Boudreau is the foremost authority on the indigenous Tarahumara Indians. When the Spaniards arrived in Mexico in the 16th century, the Tarahumara retreated into the Copper Canyon of the Sierra Madre Occidental. The Tarahumara are incredible athletes, renowned for their long distance running ability. For 50 years Gene has traveled into the mountain wilderness, sometimes on foot, often on burro, to study the culture and ways of these ancient people, making friends and buying their wares. He has survived banditos, smugglers, drug lords, dysentery, typhoid and the heat. He has written numerous books, including Trails of the Sierra Madre, Tales of the Sierra Madre, and Chubasco, a novel of the 1910 Mexican Revolution. He has amassed an incredible collection of ethnographic artifacts and photographs. In 2000, he donated 2500 items of his collection to the Smithsonian Institute, which noted this contribution as the most important collection of 20th century materials from Northern Mexico in existence.
September 26: DOROTHY PIERCE, Ph.D. – "Art"
Dorothy Pierce, BA, Stanford University; MA- UC, Berkeley; PhD, UNT- has been painting and teaching art for many years in Texas and California, all levels from pre-school to Elderhostel with many years at SMU. Her own art work includes representational and abstract styles, has won many prizes, and is in collections throughout the US. It isn’t so much the how of art as the why which interests her. And she is concerned that the current emphasis on math and science is threatening to diminish art education. As an example of art’s importance to society, she will present a BRIEF slide survey of representations of the human form during for past 25,000 years and consider what they tell us about the societies of their time.